Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.

There is a great suspicion of saying that anyone, especially a child, is 'the product of destiny,' or 'formed by fate,' or 'predestined for a certain life.' I am suspicious, too, of efforts to cage children or adults in preconceived ideas of who they are or should be.

I don't have dreams. How can I say it? I myself am a dream.

I don't think I'm tangible to myself.

It is always the same: once you are liberated, you are forced to ask who you are.

Sooner or later we've all got to confront the reality that we have got to come to understand who we are and what we're doing, and the extent to which we are guided or manipulated by forces that are beyond our control.

You, your joys and sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and your free will are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.

Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I.

Waking up begins with saying am and now. That which has awoken then lies for a while staring up at the ceiling and down into itself until it has recognized I, and therefrom deduced I am, I am now. Here comes next, and is at least negatively reassuring; because here, this morning, is where it has expected to find itself: what’s called at home.

Who am I? If this once I were to rely on a proverb, then perhaps everything would amount to knowing whom I 'haunt.'

I am only me for practical purposes.

As for myself: I had come to the conclusion that there was nothing sacred about myself or about any human being, that we were all machines, doomed to collide and collide and collide.

The whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key.

Man must not only make himself: the weightiest thing he has to do is to determine what he is going to be. He is causa sui to the second power.

I am me, whatever that means. I am conscious.

Every act is an act of self definition.

Man exists, turns up, appears on the scene and only afterwards, defines himself

Every day we choose who we are by how we define ourselves.

My God, but what do I care about the laws of nature and arithmatic if for some reason these laws and two times two is four are not to my liking?

I'm sure you think that I don't understand what you're going through, but I do. It's just that sometimes, our future is dictated by what we are, opposed to what we want.

All you need to do is know who you are.

Even if I don't like what I am, I know what I am. My children like what they are, but they don't know what they are. So tell me which is worse.

I wanted to seem completely invisible but whenever you're saying someone else's words and relaying the story of someone else's life, it's not you.

I know who I am, how I was. I don't want to know how I will be because nobody knows that.

Identity is this incredible invisible force that controls your whole life. It's invisible, like gravity is invisible, but it controls your whole life.